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The beatings that wake you up….

Max Here…. First weekend of January 2018. How do I currently feel about 2017?…….. Like a box of chocolates, and most of them sour. These last 6 months have been devastating to me mentally. And if I haven’t told you before… if your not careful… What happens to you mentally will usually affect you emotionally. Then from there its just a stones throw from a big rolling ball of bad days that turns into a shit sandwich kind of life.

So whats been happening to me lately? Well, are we talking about the world around me? How I feel about what I am trying to do? or just in general?

Just in general, life has been no better or worse than any other day of my life….. My mom is still alive. She is now in her 80s. Things like that become important when we get older. and my dog, (the only woman who has stood by me for 10 years strong, is also still alive)

But to be more specific….. The personal things I need in my life (and for now when I say personal things, these things are currently just, for me, currently not something that I want to share in such an open forum) maybe in time I might change my view of sharing certain deep personal intimate things, but for now…not ready. But so there are personal things in my life that I have been working on and it has just been one fallen challenge after another. Quite painful. I’ve been working at looking at the term “falling” thru a different lens lately. And no longer do I really look at anything as a problem. Every once in a while I must use that word to help someone see the depth and gravity of the challenge. But to me, for the most part, there is no such thing as a problem. And lately I have been able to up my mental fortitude on looking at a challenge as just a pivoting point to attain my goal. I am very specific about using that word “pivot”. Any other view envisioned could easily only cause the attempted attainment of my goal to become a “problem”.

Back to the fallen challenges, The personal ones take the hardest toll on me, on my soul. Not to mention my ego, forget my goals for a moment. Self inflicted pain on my soul and ego is just fucking devastating. It hurts, so the ability to pivot, to re-frame, to bounce back, to properly recoil and re-calibrate becomes nearly impossible, and yet so deeply vital. Then there is the open personal stuff…. Skydiving for example, and just for example….Although I love doing amazingly new and eye catching things, I have not been able to master the things that I want to do in the air. When you jump out of the plane you have give or take, about 30 seconds to execute your objective. No second chance within those 30 seconds. And to get back up in the air, not only does that cost more money, but also the wait time needed to have a seat ready for you. So yes, my skydiving skills have not been moving fast enough. Then there is the business side…. Ya ready for this…. FUCK!!! DAMN!! FUCK!! FUCK!! SHIT!! FFFFUUUUCCCCCKKKKKK!!!!!!!   UUUUUUGGGGHHHHH!! Just one fallen challenge after another.

I have been working on this damn apartment for so long. 2 to 3 years now. Its been that long that I can’t even remember how fucking long it has been. I have had to move the goal post on it’s deadline more times than Donald Trump has made misleading and misdirecting lies . And now, finally now, now in 2018, this damn apartment (at least the inside) is finally almost ready. I have had to remodel literally just about every damn aspect of that apartment. Foundation, walls, flooring, counters, plumbing, gas, stairs, lighting, and the list doesn’t seem to ever stop. Have I learned what NOT to do???? Fuck yes! but then again, before I stick my foot in my mouth… I have probably only learned a couple of basics of what not to do. I’m sure I’m destined to make some of the same mistakes again. But at least they won’t be to such a big degree, and if they are, then I will know how to pivot, creatively re-perceive and recalculate a better outcome.

So now this apartment is almost ready, and when I say almost ready…. I mean that I can literally almost taste the moment when I can take photos and put this puppy on the market . It’s like RIGHT THERE! I can almost touch the outcome. And the toughest part…. Damn contractors that don’t see the importance the way I do. But then again…. and this is very important…… Until I can afford better contractors, I gotta eat a damn shit sandwich. Another tough thing for me, is that I don’t like being an ass to people. I don’t like having to push people, I don’t like to keep having to hound people, I don’t like to keep asking them to do something that they should already know to do, or even ask why they did not get to it when they said they would get to it in a timely manner. For example, this coming week I have a plumber coming out to do a job. He is charging me $450 for a job that will take at max 6 hours. I consider that shit a rip off, but hey such is the life of contractors. I can find another person to do it cheaper, but then I gotta deal with either a high possibility of a crappy job, or tardiness, or just blatant delays. Then again, I can always do it myself and waste, yes I now consider it wasting a whole day when I could be doing something better to further my business, or even feed my soul. To point blank, sadly I can’t yet afford to have every top notch contractor. So I have to pick my battles.

So how do I eat this beautiful crappy tasting shit sandwich????  A sandwich made with emotional pain, a sandwich made with extra setbacks, extra delays, and Oh… and even as of late, a shit sandwich made with extra unexpected bills that now severely hinder how quickly I can accomplish many of my goals. not to mention the ability to pay my bills. All of this, It affects my sleep. It affects my ability to even get out of bed. It affects my eating habits…. (bad bad bad eating habits) it affects my desire to go to the gym, it affects my drive to go into the studio to work on one of my most loved passions, music! It affects and touches every damn aspect of my life, both inside and out. And most of all it just affects me, Max! Things have got to change.

Like I said, this has been going on for months now. In the back of my mind, I have quietly been telling myself that I have gotta get out of this rut. I gotta do something to shake this monkey off of my back. But what do I do? Where do I start? A week or so ago I downloaded a new book on creativity. I gave it a listen. And a couple of days ago I even downloaded a book on drive/motivation. And today I listened to something that I think I have left un listened to for way too long……. Eric Thomas! Specifically, Evan Carmichael’s 2015 and 2016 Mentor Me videos of Eric Thomas.

Something about Eric’s way of being blunt. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the hood in him that I just can’t help but to relate to. Who knows, I’ve grown up really poor, so “hood” is sadly super easy for me to conceptualize. Again, I don’t know, but for me, he just drips with motivation. And for some reason after listening to him I felt better. Tony Robbins would say that I needed to remember my “why’s”. For me I just needed to remember that I too can breathe the fire. That I too can push. That I too can feed off of negativity, pain, and despair, that I too was built on doing things when every one else said I was stupid, dumb, or too crazy for attempting to do what I believed in.

Eating a shit sandwich is the toughest thing to do. It doesn’t taste good. But fuck, the fuel that it gives you, the energy that it builds within you, it helps you to remember that no matter what, no one but no one, is ever going to stop me from getting my dreams. I might have to eat a million shit sandwiches. I might have to have a shit sandwich for breakfast, a shit sandwich for lunch, a shit sandwich for dinner, and then later, guess what…. a shit sandwich before bed. My stomach might hurt, and you might even see my eyes tear up and see the liquid fall from my eyes. But just know that those shit sandwich tears are not tears of a white flag. Those are not tears that I have fallen and will never get up again. Don’t ever think that I have given up on the end goal. Know this…. those tears will always be one of 2 things…. Either they will be tears given as I talk to my creator, my savior, the one person who asked me to live this life that I agreed to live for him. If you ever see those tears then know that it’s a personal conversation that is normal. But if you see the other tears. the one where my face is no longer looking to the sky….. but instead it is pointed down to the ground at the tears that have fallen from my face…. those tears….Those are tears of anger. And the pain I endure will only fuel the fire that I will breathe. To see my own tears drip from my own face is the absolute sure fire way wake every fiber of my own personal self belief. At that point, I won’t care. I won’t be nice. It won’t matter where I am at, or where I am standing. By that time I already had that talk with my creator, and so my only goal is to prove you wrong, to get the goal when you brutally denied me rather than lovingly cultivated me or said that I can never do it, made fun of me, or even found some way to express that I don’t deserve it.

To sum it up. How to eat a shit sandwich……Listen to me……. Eat it with every fucking emotion in your body. Eat it with anger, eat it with pain, eat it with every god damn disappointment that you ever had. Then, and only then, take a deep breath, look within, then feel that shit sandwich fuel the anger, fuel the determination, fuel the person that believes in himself again, then feel it wake the person that breathes the fire that will burn down every god damn boat needed to take the fucking island!

Max.

#Determination.